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Rating: It is very difficult to change one's opinion about a person. Until a few years ago, Kim Rossi Stuart was not a real actor for me because when I thought of him, I remembered the eyesores "Il ragazzo dal kimono d'oro" and the TV series "Fantaghirò." I reassessed him as I grew older, and the recent releases "Le chiavi di casa," "Anche libero va bene," and "Romanzo criminale" made me completely appreciate him. From my point of view, he is able to embody sad, enigmatic, reserved characters with an expression of perpetual melancholy that surrounds them and never goes away completely, even in the happiest moments of a film.
The striking "Piano, solo", based on the book by the Mayor of Rome Walter Veltroni "Il disco del mondo. Vita breve di Luca Flores, musicista.", retraces the life of a jazz artist; the best Italian jazz pianist of the period (we are in Florence in the '80s, I believe), Luca Floris, capable of playing with sacred monsters like Chet Baker and Massimo Urbani.
Riccardo Milani ("Tanti auguri professore" and "Il posto dell'anima") wanted Kim Rossi Stuart in his cast for the delicate task of playing the protagonist. A pure talent trapped in a personality too delicate, too fragile and irreversibly cracked by both the early death of his mother in a car accident and the intermittent presence of his father, often busy working around the world. Luca does not have the strength to endure an abnormal life that falls on him because of the gift he received: music, and that incredible ability to excel naturally on the piano keys. In this regard, there's a very beautiful line in the film by Massimo Urbani who, in introducing him to the public, says: "Luca does not smoke, does not use drugs and does not drink. I just don't know how the hell he plays so well!!!".
He does not seek out events; rather, they strike him as if he were a magnet. It is he who is sought by 2 local jazz musicians to start his career in a local trio; it is he who is "captured" by the girl of his life, and it is he who is taken on European tours. Everything happens almost by chance, as if it were fate.
Music and the pursuit of absolute perfection in perpetual training scales obsess him and slowly isolate him and fracture, then break, his relationship with Cinzia (Jasmine Trinca), who realizes she can't have what she wants with Luca: "a normal life." Thus begins the slow and inexorable decline. Luca slowly becomes insane, and the terrible thing is that he is perfectly aware of it. In a poignant scene with his sister (Paola Cortellesi), he obsessively asks her: "promise me you'll never make me wear a straitjacket." The film continues in a continuous struggle in search of the hoped-for healing. Luca brushes against it when he goes to Africa (beautiful photography) to relive the past (his childhood and the place where his mother died) and finally seems to find the taste of lost happiness, but it is only a temporary illusion. Too late. He can no longer play in public, and madness spreads, and he does not want to spend the rest of his life in a straitjacket...
The cast completely satisfied me. After "Romanzo Criminale," the duo Kim Rossi Stuart/Jasmine Trinca is back together, and among the other actors, there are remarkable performances by Paola Cortellesi and Michele Placido. If I may offer a criticism, aside from the overly television-like editing of the scenes, I would have focused more on the development of the musician's complicated personality that led him to madness, rather than describing the dramatic and predictable effects. Nevertheless, it remains a good film that sheds light on a talent, prematurely lost, in recent Italian music. Recommended.
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